Technical Abstract:
The trend toward larger concentrated animal feeding operations has generated a sustainable surplus of manure. In addition to its traditional use as a fertilizer, manure is a rich organic resource that can be used as a bioenergy feedstock. While thermochemical conversion of animal manure via combustion, pyrolysis, and gasification is becoming a new frontier of animal manure treatment;there is relatively little known about its behavior when subjected to these high-temperature energy-conversion processes. In this study, the oxidation behavior of three different swine manures (flushed, separated solids, and lagoon sludge) were examined by thermal analyses using simultaneous thermogravimetry (TG) and differential thermal analysis (DTA). There seem to be three distinct stages of weight loss and two prominent heat flow peaks. After the manure was degraded microbially in the lagoon, weight loss due to oxidation became less pronounced as well as occurring at lower temperatures. For the flushed and separated solids, TG and DTA profiles were similar with separated solids having slightly greater weight loss attributed to a greater volatile matter composition and less ash. Accordingly, it would be expected to be a slightly better combustible feedstock.